Display Rotation Management

1. A device comprising: a housing configured according to a mobile form factor; a display device disposed on a surface of the housing; one or more sensors disposed within the housing, the one or more sensors configured to produce an output that is usable to determine an orientation of the display device in one or more dimensions; and a rotation manager module disposed within the housing and configured to: process the output of the one or more sensors to determine the orientation of the display device; set a screen orientation of the display device based at least in part on variance of the determined orientation in relation to a threshold amount over a time interval; change the screen orientation upon a determination that the screen orientation does not correspond to the determined orientation and the determined orientation varies less than the threshold amount over the time interval; responsive to a determination that the orientation of the display device has changed, process the output of the one or more sensors at a higher sampling rate; and responsive to a determination that the determined orientation varies more than the threshold amount over the time interval, process the output of the one or more sensors to determine the orientation of the display device at the higher sampling rate over at least one additional time interval.

2. A device as described in claim 1 , wherein the one or more sensors include at least one of a three-dimensional (3D) accelerometer, a gyroscope, a distance sensor, or a camera.

3. A device as described in claim 1 , wherein the screen orientation is set to one of a landscape orientation or a portrait orientation.

4. A device as described in claim 1 , wherein the setting of the screen orientation by the rotation manager module is further configured to maintain the screen orientation without change when the screen orientation does not correspond to the determined orientation and the determined orientation varies more than the threshold amount over the time interval.

5. A device as described in claim 1 , wherein the threshold amount corresponds to an angular tolerance over the time interval.

6. A device as described in claim 1 , wherein the rotation manager module is further configured to determine whether the determined orientation varies less than the threshold amount by: computing a standard deviation for the orientation of the device determined at multiple points over the time interval; and comparing the standard deviation to the threshold amount.

7. A device as described in claim 1 , wherein the rotation manager module is further configured to rotate the screen orientation when the screen orientation does not correspond to the determined orientation and the determined orientation varies less than the threshold amount over the at least one additional time interval.

8. A device as described in claim 1 , wherein the rotation manager module is further configured to maintain the screen orientation when the screen orientation does not correspond to the determined orientation and the determined orientation varies more than the threshold amount over the at least one additional time interval.

9. A method comprising: detecting a change in orientation of a device using one or more sensors configured to produce output that is usable to determine the orientation of the device; collecting the output from the one or more sensors to determine the orientation of the device at multiple points over a time interval, the output collected from the one or more sensors at a rate less than or equal to once every 250 milliseconds; computing an average orientation of the device and a variance of the orientation using the determined orientation corresponding to each of the multiple points over the time interval; and setting a screen orientation for displaying content on the device based on the average orientation of the device and the variance of the orientation of the device, the variance of the orientation of the device compared to a threshold amount of angular tolerance over the time interval.

10. A method as described in claim 9 , further comprising repeating the collecting, computing, and setting operations for at least one additional time interval when the computed variance for the time interval is greater than the threshold amount.

11. A method as described in claim 9 , further comprising increasing a sampling rate at which output from the one or more sensors is collected responsive to detecting the change in orientation of the device.

12. A method as described in claim 11 , further comprising decreasing the sampling rate from an increased sampling rate responsive to determining that the computed variance for the time interval is less than the threshold amount.

13. A method as described in claim 11 , wherein the increased sampling rate causes the output to be collected from the one or more sensors at a rate greater than once every 250 milliseconds.

14. A method as described in claim 9 , further comprising maintaining the screen orientation when the screen orientation does not correspond to the average orientation of the device and the computed variance for the time interval is greater than the threshold amount.

15. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving multiple points of orientation data for a device that are derived from output of one or more sensors and correspond to a time interval; processing the output of the one or more sensors to determine the orientation of the display device; computing an average orientation of the device and a variance of the orientation over the time interval using the multiple points of orientation data; changing a screen orientation upon a determination that the orientation of the device does not correspond to the determined orientation and the determined orientation varies less than the threshold amount over the time interval; responsive to a determination that the orientation of the display device has changed, processing the output of the one or more sensors at a higher sampling rate; and responsive to a determination that the determined orientation varies more than the threshold amount over the time interval, processing the output of the one or more sensors to determine the orientation of the display device at the higher sampling rate over at least one additional time interval.

16. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 15 , wherein changing the current screen orientation includes skipping intermediate screen orientations between the current screen orientation and a screen orientation that corresponds to the average orientation of the device.

17. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 15 , wherein: computing a variance of the orientation over the time interval includes computing a standard deviation of the multiple points of orientation data; and determining that the variance computed for the time interval is less than the threshold amount includes comparing the standard deviation of the multiple points of orientation data to the threshold amount.

18. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 15 , wherein the one or more sensors include at least one of a three-dimensional (3D) accelerometer, a gyroscope, a distance sensor, or a camera.

19. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 15 , wherein the output is collected from the one or more sensors at a rate less than once every 250 milliseconds.

20. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 15 , further comprising collecting additional orientation data and computing average orientations and variances for multiple additional time intervals responsive to a determination that the determined orientation of the display device at the higher sampling rate is greater than the threshold amount.